The truth is that blogs require both time and energy. During that timeperiod between the end of my collegiate career and the beginning of my professional one, I had an abundance of both. Once I started work at Sun, it didn’t take long for that energy to be redirected into my career and my increasing number of responsibilities.

I have repeatedly told friends and family that someday my blog will return. In order for this to happen though, I need to readjust my attitude and strategy. If my blog is going to survive a second launch, it needs to be more than just a side hobby that I get to when I have time. It needs to be ingrained into my schedule — a regular event, but not a chore. It needs to be part of who I am and what I do. If it’s anything else, than it will burn out again as just another passing obsession.

There are still some things that I need to do before rejoining the blogosphere. Stay tuned though, Owen’s blog will return!

The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart. . . .Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

Not only is this a silly threat, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of what “control” in this particular context actually means. The control that ICANN possesses is of purely technical context. When you type a domain name into your browser, ICANN is responsible for coordinating the process of resolving that domain name into an IP address and ensuring universal connectivity. It is a centralized body created to maintain consistency in the protocols and processes that make up this system and it has absolutely nothing to do with the content or systems that literally make up front-end, visible piece of what is “the internet.” It is true that this should be controlled by some international body, but with a stable and working system already in place, it makes no sense to try and uproot this stability when the “control” being restructured isn’t anything that most average citizens even care about.

Let’s say the EU does actually act on this undoubtedly empty threat. They would essentially restructure the internet so that residents residing within the nations of the European Union would only be able to access websites that are located within these same nations. The result would be isolating and angering their own constituents because of a minimally important power struggle. That sounds logical to me. In truth the obvious, and probably inevitable course of action will be to gradually internationalize the responsibilities currently held by ICANN.

A California senator [Sen. Dianne Feinstein] has suggested that because file-sharing networks continue to house illegal files, they should be shut down. … Pointing to what she called a “rise in peer to peers” since the Grokster decision, Feinstein said current law is not effective enough to deter illegal file swapping and the government must enact stronger enforcement measures. “If we don’t stop it,” she said, “it’s going to destroy these intellectual property industries.”

It seems outrageous to me that legislators, lawyers, and RIAA suits can continue to quibble about an issue that most of them completely do not understand. There is undeniable truth to the assessment that the music industry has a legitimate gripe about consumers illegally acquiring music through file swapping services. However, what they don’t seem to realize is that throwing laws and lawsuits at the problem does nothing to help their cause. Consider the following points:

• Imagine that a retail store has caught a 13 year old child attempting to steal hundreds of dollars worth of goods. A typical response might be to call the police, re-acquire the stolen property, and enforce proper disciplinary action on the offending child. Nobody would suggest that the store sue the child for monetary damages thousands of times greater than the actual value of the stolen goods. Yet this is essentially what the RIAA is doing. It doesn’t seem to me like very good publicity or an effective way to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with its customers.
• Contrary to what the RIAA bigwigs and many of the legislators and lawyers seem to be saying, file swapping services have very legitimate and wholly legal uses. The fact that they are used for illegal activity is unfortunate, but certainly not a valid reason to shut them down. I’m pretty certain that many other legitimate internet services have been used for illegal activities. I’m purely speculating here, but perhaps instant message services or email services have been used for terrorist communications? or maybe child pornography has been spread through online photo publishing services? or how about viruses being spread through the very infrastructure that defines the internet? I haven’t heard any cries to shut these services down yet.
• Perhaps even more ignorant of the RIAA is that the legitimate legal uses of these file swapping services can and do directly benefit the music industry. Many, many, many independent and lesser-known artists embrace file sharing services as a means to spread their music and freely distribute and advertise their content. Does the RIAA even realize this? or do they just not care about these artists because they are not a significant contribution to their bottom line?

The music industry has a potentially very profitable music distribution paradigm sitting right in front of them. They have already made a step in the right direction unveiling services such as Napster 2.0 and Apple’s iTunes. However, I am sure that they can exploit this model further to make file-swapping services a true benefit to their business. Rather than wasting money on lawsuits, lawyers, and legislation that ultimately stifles innovation, they should be investing this money directly into research efforts to encourage innovation in this area. You can’t eradicate the pirates and the copyright infringers; they will always find a way to live on. Instead, give people a reason to want to buy music through legitimate means.

In any case, the new Google Blog Search tool (released in Beta form in typical Google fashion) operates using this same technique as most of the existing blog search services out there. Early returns seem to indicate that it is similarly useful to all of the other players in this particular niche service industry. However, since it’s Google, I would imagine that Technorati et. al. are none too happy (and yet none too surprised) that Google has entered into direct competition for the services that they provide.

Company executives said Monday that eBay plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock to the global communications company. It has agreed to hand over up to an extra $1.5 billion, for a total payout of more than $4 billion, if Skype meets certain financial targets by 2008, according to a presentation to investors on Monday morning.

$1.3 billion in cash? I don’t really understand the economics of this deal. For those who don’t know who Skype is, they are an increasingly popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) provider that allows subscribers to make free “phone calls” over the internet using their PC microphone/speakers. It also offers a for-pay service where users can tap into traditional telecommunications networks by making phone calls from their PC’s to ordinary telephones. It appears as though eBay sees incredibly profitable potential (at least $2.6 billion worth?) in integrating VoIP capabilities into their online auction services. Their argument is that allowing users to communicate via audio devices without the need to give out their telephone numbers could greatly expedite and simplify the eBay process. Perhaps there is merit in this idea.

However, I don’t see how they can quantify their return on investment in this deal. Clearly the Skype user base has some value, but I don’t see hoards of Skype subscribers flocking to eBay’s auctions simply because eBay owns the service. Additionally, users of eBay are by now very accustomed to using email as the primary form of communication. Not to say that VoIP integration wouldn’t be appreciated by some users, but I would imagine that many buyers and sellers enjoy the simplicity of not having to speak with anyone at all during transactions. In any case, to me it seems like an ill-advised purchase. I could probably think of many, many better things to do with $2.6 billion.

In any case, I haven’t had much time to blog over the past few days because of all these commitments. Regardless, I just wanted to make a quick comment about Apple’s recent announcement concerning their new cell phone / iPod combination device. I’ve seen a few small companies come out with devices like this but nobody with the marketing clout and name recognition like Apple. My question is, why haven’t these combo music player – cell phone pieces taken off years ago? It seems to me like an unbelievably obvious match to embed portable music players into cell phones. This way you don’t have to carry around both. I certainly think that more people would be attracted to a built-in music player rather than a built-in camera that doesn’t even take very nice quality pictures. However, it seems like every cell phone out there, these days, has digital camera functionality.

In any case, I would anticipate that Apple’s new offering will be not only successful, but also copied by every major cell phone manufacturing company on the planet. Get ready for the next big pitch in the incredibly over-marketed cell phone industry.

The state of Massachusetts is proposing to make all its workers stop using Microsoft’s Word, Excel and other desktop software applications and switch to open source software, said the Financial Times. In its online edition, the newspaper reported that the US state said yesterday that at the beginning of 2007 it is planning to order all state employees to create and save documents using only open format software.

This is definitely an intriguing move. Personally, I haven’t used Microsoft Word in a long, long time. Having thus far developed my skills in the academic world, most of my documents these days are built with the ever so geeky LaTex. I do think that Excel and Powerpoint are quality applications, but at the same time, OpenOffice offers very similar applications with many of the same features and functionality. OpenOffice is of course free; Microsoft Office we all know is definitely not.

However, regardless of whether you are inclined to pay a lot of money for an application suite, or use a very very similar one for free, I think the main problem that plagues the Office-centric business world is not what software people use to create their documents, it’s what formats they use to distribute them. For example, let’s say I’m looking to buy something – it doesn’t matter what it is – from some company. So I express interest, let them know what I’m looking for and they send me a quote for this product. If you’re this company, please please please don’t send me a Microsoft Word document, or even an OpenOffice document for that matter. If all I want to do is open and read your quote, why on Earth would I want to start a full fledged document editing/writing/creating application if all I want to do is view it? Documents that are meant for viewing should be sent in viewable-only formats (such as the de facto standard PDF). This way, I can open a much smaller and simpler document viewing application rather than the cockpit-of-a-747 Microsoft Word.

I think Massachusetts is on the right track by mandating a switch to only open formats. However, I’ve see it all too often in the business world where people send Microsoft Word documents all over the place and their only purpose is for the receivers to open them up and look at them. Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or any other office suite should be used for the creation of content only. The distribution of this content should be done in open, view-only formats such as PDF. Of course now we run into the problem that most people have no idea how to convert a Microsoft Office document into PDF. Uggh.

During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane. Moving to higher elevations would be just as dangerous as staying on low ground. Had Camille, a Category 5 storm, made landfall at New Orleans, instead of losing her punch before arriving, her winds would have blown twice as hard and her storm surge would have been three times as high.

It’s difficult to predict catasrophes such as the Katrina disaster in New Orleans and the tsunami disaster in Asia. The raw truth, though, is that the research and the predictions are usually out there. Perhaps we need to pay more attention to some of the doomsdayers cries after all. Averting the blow of at least one future disaster could be worth it.

For one day only, you can get an ad-free version of Opera. Simply e-mail registerme@opera.com to obtain a registration code. This offer is valid from 12 a.m. Tuesday, August 30 to 12 a.m. Wednesday, August 31 2005 (PDT).

I’ve never actually tried Opera myself since the ad-free version is not free and I’m quite happy with Firefox. With this promotion, though, I think I’ll at least give it a look. I’ve heard many good things about it.

UPDATE: Thanks to digg.com I’ve found a site where you can retrieve your free registration code instantly rather than waiting for the folks at Opera to reply to your request by email. Here’s the link. Enjoy!